1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to the delivery of networked services by a service provider and, more particularly, to bandwidth constraints associated with the delivery of networked services.
2. Description of the Related Art
Service providers may provide their subscribers with various services including multimedia services by which subscribers obtain television and other multimedia content for viewing, data services such as Internet access, and telephony services including local, long distance, and/or video conferencing telephone services. In a bundled scenario, a provider may deliver two or more of these services to subscribers over an access network physical layer that is common to the bundled services. Each service in the bundle consumes a portion of the maximum data rate or bandwidth that the physical layer can sustain. The finite bandwidth must be distributed among the bundled services so that an increase in the bandwidth allocation for one service must be offset by a decrease in bandwidth allocation for one or more of the other services. There is, however, no allocation of bandwidth among multimedia, telephony, and data that is universally optimal for all subscribers.